It's the Brian Larry Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. You've been hearing the news of the Trump

executive order to begin dismantling the U.S. Department of Education. It would take an act of Congress to

abolish it officially, but Trump and his education secretary, Linda McMahon, are downsizing to the

extent that they say is allowed by law that involves telling half the staff to stop doing their

work and much more. And it has many potential implications for American students

at various levels. We will focus primarily now on the implications for people with student loans

with Annie Nova, CNBC personal finance reporter focusing on education who's been reporting on this.

Annie, thanks for coming on. Welcome to WNYC. Thanks for having me.

And listeners, we're inviting your questions about student loan programs as the Federal Department

of Education gets dismantled. 212-433, WNYC, or your stories that might help others. 212,

433-9-692, stories or questions for Annie Nova from CNBC, 212, 433, 9692

about student loans in the era of shutting down the education department.

You quote consumer advocates who say this couldn't come at a worse time for student

borrowers. Why is that? Yeah, exactly. So to take a step back for a minute, President Joe Biden

forgave more student debt than any other president in history. And yet, believe it or not,

outstanding federal education loans still grew while he was in office. So Americans owe more today on student

debt than they did four years ago despite that historic forgiveness. And that's because each year,

millions of students have to take on more loans to go to college. And Americans are really

struggling with this debt. Some recent data showed some where around 9 million people are

behind on their student loans.

A number of promises that the Biden administration had made were unfortunately not able to reach borrowers because of court decisions and a number of legal challenges.

So he'd promised to forgive up to $20,000 for millions of borrowers, and the Supreme Court ultimately struck that down.

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